The complete loss of not only common sense (they admit to eating meat while claiming that the killing of animals is wrong) and the complete loss of civility (an adult allowing his preteen son to call an adult an asshole and tell him to fuck off) is just a bridge too far.
The American people and its society have completely broken down.
As you will recall, I was appealing the tax assessor’s valuation of my old house because I felt that the house had been undervalued for tax purposes. Since that would actually increase the taxes in my new house (I explain that here) I decided to appeal the valuation. The hearing was just a few days after my mother had passed away, so I will admit that I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.
The hearing was in front of a magistrate. One thing that I felt was unfair about this is that the magistrate was an employee of the tax assessor’s office in another county. Since all of the counties in the state use the same methods and computer software, I don’t feel that the magistrate is an unbiased individual.
Still, I thought that I presented my case pretty well. I pointed out that my house was valued at $154/sf, but every house in my neighborhood sold for $195 to $210 per square foot, even using the assessor’s office’s numbers. Even at the low end, my house was undervalued by a significant margin.
That’s when the excuses started. The assessor claimed that they were permitted by law to subtract the customary costs of sale from the fair market value and then they began pointing out that the other houses that had sold had features that my house didn’t- one had a pool, one was a corner lot, two others were on the edge of the neighborhood, etc. This, according to them, made my house less valuable.
By the end of the hearing, the magistrate and the assessor were both explaining to me that I just don’t understand real estate. Keep in mind that they were all government employees whose judgement means nothing, because they don’t invest in real estate. They merely tax those who do. I was able to show, using the assessor’s own data, that the assessor’s office is consistently 15-25% lower than actual market value. That didn’t matter, I got lectured about how TOP MEN used computers to value this property, and the methods are used all over the state.
So I thought I had lost. I resigned myself to getting screwed by the tax man.
Imagine my surprise when I got the magistrate’s decision. I didn’t get a total win, and I didn’t even get as much as I hoped for, but I did get something. The magistrate recommended that my valuation be increased from $154 per square foot to $164 per square foot. Not great, but the increase will lower my property taxes on the new house by about $400 per year. In total, the deductions from Save Our Homes portability decrease my property taxes by about $3000 a year.
Do I like paying $750 a month in property taxes? No. That’s why I fight to keep my taxes as low as I can, and this hearing cost me $25 plus a few hours of my time. Property taxes and the 6 percent sales tax are the only taxes we pay here in Florida, so it’s just something that we have to live with. At least we don’t have personal property taxes or income taxes. Still, I often wonder what it is we get for that tax rate.
it took the DOJ nearly two years and how many millions of dollars to figure out that the Uvalde cops screwed the pooch.
The report builds on a scathing investigation by state lawmakers that found “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making” among the almost 400 law enforcement officers who responded.
Yet not a single one of the 400 cowards who stood there, holding back parents trying to rescue their children while listening to them being slaughtered by a madman will face any real repercussions from their cowardice and failure to act.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has ordered banks to flag transactions that contain certain keywords such as “MAGA” “Trump” and other political words. If those words are found to be tied to a financial transaction, that account and the person who owns it is referred for further investigation. You can bet that other keywords are also being used. I could easily see all transactions involving products like Ghost Gunner, bulk ammo purchases, and even donations to SAF or FPC being used to flag people. There lies your de facto gun registration.
Like we have been saying for years about registration- there is only one purpose for a firearm registry, and that is confiscation. These keyword investigations are a prelude to mass arrests, denial of public access to things (a social credit score), or some other punitive action. There is nothing else that these investigations can be used for under the law and Constitution as it exists today.
The Democrats are angry and accusing the judge in Trump’s politically motivated trial of using politics to delay that trial until after the election.
California’s minimum wage is increasing 25% in April, to $20 an hour. Employers are going to raise prices, but that can only be done so much before customers decide to eat at home. That point, it appears, has been reached. So now the layoffs begin. Pizza Hut just laid off 1,200 workers in California. Fatburger has implemented a hiring freeze. Both chains have eliminated paid time off.
It’s almost like those of us who understand economics have been warning of this for years.
My wife and I recently had lunch with her best friend. We had a chat about the little Marxist that is her step-son. I’ve known the kid since he was an eight year old child. He was awkward when I met him, but he is intolerable now. He is a 17 year old leftist that spends his spare time protesting capitalism. Every time I am in his presence, I want to punch his face, so I simply avoid him.
About a year ago, he decided to be some sort of odd alternate gender. Although he is interested in girls, he couldn’t get laid at a goat farm because he is so opinionated and political all of the time. He has said that’s OK, because he isn’t interested in sex. That’s when he started wearing a skirt on the outside of his pants. He complained that he had no friends because everyone here is homophobic.
He announced that some girl he likes is going to college in Boston, so he wants to go there too, where they will be more tolerant of his deviant behavior. It isn’t the weird sexual deviancy thing going on that’s keeping him from having friends or getting dates. He is just an asshole with no social skills, and I doubt that he will have any better luck making friends there than he has here.
What we have here is an entire generation that has no social skills because their parents abdicated raising children, instead giving them cell phones and Internet access. They learned about life by reading the Internet.
I think that there should be a law restricting Internet capable devices with full Internet capability to children over the age of 15. For the ages of 10-14, they only have a watered down machine that only gets access to age appropriate PG content. Below that, they are restricted to G rated material only.
Sorry, but children are being groomed and set up to be complete failures in life. It’s time that we accept that children just aren’t intellectually and emotionally capable of handling adult topics.
As my readers will recall, my mother passed away a little over a month ago. When we initially went to the funeral home, her husband told us that he didn’t have any money, so my brother and I covered the costs associated with the cremation and other expenses. Over $3000 worth of expenses. At the time we paid, we designated my sister as the point of contact for the family. We paid for the cremation, 4 certified copies of the death certificate, and urns to split the ashes. (The Husband wanted some, my sister did, too. My brother and I didn’t get one, we just got the free container, because it’s our intention to bury Mom’s ashes in the grave that her and Dad already paid for.)
Once that was done, he asked us to provide him with one of the copies of Mom’s death certificate, and he also said that Mom didn’t want to be buried with her late husband (my Dad), but instead wanted to be buried with him (the widower). He asked us for another 10 large to cover the costs associated with a plot for the two of them, again claiming that he was broke. That was one thing that we weren’t going to pay for. Not my responsibility to pay for the burial plot for a man I barely knew.
He and mom were married a little over two years before her death. At that time, mom disposed of most of her stuff somehow, and moved in with him. Mom’s husband asked us to come over to his house and clean out Mom’s belongings. We agreed, because we were trying to find out what happened to a house full of expensive furniture, as well as the whereabouts of 150 thousand dollars in retirement funds.
Mom didn’t leave a will. Or so we thought. While we were cleaning out the detached garage, we found $4000 in cash and a copy of four wills. The first three were from when Dad was still alive. The fourth was interesting- it was less than 10 years old, named my brother as being the executor of the estate, and even though it was from before she remarried, it was the most current will. My sister handed the cash to the husband and his daughter before my brother and I could stop her. As a reader here, you would know that my sister is kind of stupid like that. She is also a Democrat, which explains why she doesn’t understand money, the law, or most other things of practical value.
WE contacted Mom’s stock broker to trace the money. What we didn’t know was that the husband and his daughter had taken Mom’s death certificate and a copy of their marriage license to the bank and had them cut the husband a check for the money. Not only that, but we found out that the husband had given Mom’s car away to his ex-wife. It turns out that the husband and daughter knew where the funds were the entire time, but neglected to tell us. They are deliberately hiding her assets.
When we pointed out that the estate hasn’t closed yet and they couldn’t be spending the money and giving away her possessions because things like funeral expenses needed to be paid from that estate, the daughter said “You aren’t expecting my father to pay for all of those things for your mother, are you? That’s HIS money now, because YOUR mother was planning on using that money to buy my dad a house. Her cremation expenses are your problem.”
My brother is PISSED. So am I. We are now paying an attorney to sue his ass and enforce the will. I don’t care if I don’t get a dime, but that asshole and his greedy twenty something daughter aren’t getting a penny more than the law says that they have to.
Folks- have a will. Keep it current. Don’t make your relatives deal with this sort of bullshit.
A short platoon of armed cops are raiding a house while armed with grenades and suppressed machine guns. The way that they bunch up and ignore their rear tells you that they either don’t know how to advance to contact, or they don’t really think that the people inside are a threat.
They’d already been to this house multiple times looking for the person of interest and knew he no longer lived there, yet they tossed a grenade inside, injuring an infant.
They’re larping. Unfortunately when these jackboots larp, it has real world consequences. Ones they don’t have to pay for because they have qualified immunity.
Now ask yourself- if these guys were engaged in an ambush being carried out by an armed, well motivated and trained opposing force, how many casualties would they take?
Last year, I blogged about a concealed carrier who smoked an armed robber in a Houston restaurant. The leftist prosecutors wanted him tossed in jail because he shot the guy “too many times.” The prosecutors took it to a grand jury. The jury refused to return a true bill.
Take that, you criminal loving commies.